I just cannot fathom how they think there are enough of us to matter, and how we have any meaningful political power at all. The enemy is both strong and weak. The enemy is laughable, yet an omnipresent threat. Obsession with a plot, often international. Like just say “Judeo-Bolsheviks” if that’s what you want to say.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      Right? And like, I bet you nickles to dollars she’s talking about some made up bullshit instead of, like, the extremely well documented great purge or transportation of Ethnic Germans after the war.

      Like, did Stalin do crimes? Yes. Does anyone whining about Stalin’s crimes ever talk about any historical fuck up that Stalin actually made? Never. 0% of the time. It has literally never happened. It’s always bullshit about the 1932 famine or mysteriously completely undocumented anti-semitism or some bullshit.

      • TechnoUnionTypeBeat [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        Smdh you hexbear tankies don’t believe in the evil of stalin

        My great great grandfather fled Poland to Germany in 1941 and he told me that Stalin once gathered everyone in Russia into Red Fash Square and plucked a chicken of all its feathers while feeding it to show just how evil he was

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        the extremely well documented great purge

        People talk about the Great Purge all the time, what are you talking about?

        Personally, my reading is that he was negligent in stopping it but it was a slaughter perpetrated by Yezhov, acting as a world-historical wrecker, but there’s a distressing lack of documentation about his trial (and the investigations/interrogations surrounding it) that has been released from the archives. It’s possible that he was tortured and it’s all bullshit, but Yagoda was clearly documented to be an actual opposition bloc ally at the time of his heading the NKVD, so clearly things like that are possible.

        • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          Nah, there are some documents indicating that stalin was somewhat aware of the scale of purge (e.g. we found 5k wreckers in local party - you know what to do, signed), and yezhov got got over being gay, unless i mistake him with someone else (and if i remember right, he never admitted guilt over purge itself (in that it was out of scale, not that it didn’t happen))

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            I’ll just trust you on the first part. I know Stalin got complaints (which also indicated that the scale was pretty big) and didn’t act on them, and that’s why I said he was negligent. If I remember right, Yezhov was honey-potted by a foreign power* and it used that to blackmail him (though of course sodomy was on the list of charges), but he absolutely was convicted on the basis of being a wrecker and trying to damage the SU by killing many people to destabilize it. Whether it is true that he was a wrecker or he was actually just a fall guy for a reckless operation, I don’t know. He definitely did also at one point admit to what he was ultimately convicted of, though he later claimed that he only did so under torture and was in fact innocent of most of those charges.

            Per NATOpedia:

            In his confession, Yezhov admitted to the standard litany of state crimes necessary to mark him as an “enemy of the people” prior to execution, including “wrecking”, official incompetence, theft of government funds, and treasonous collaboration with German spies and saboteurs. Apart from these political crimes, he was also accused of and confessed to a humiliating history of sexual promiscuity, including homosexuality, rumors that were later deemed true by some post-Soviet examinations of the case.

            On 2 February 1940, Yezhov was tried behind closed doors by the Military Collegium, chaired by Soviet judge Vasiliy Ulrikh. Yezhov, like his predecessor Yagoda, maintained to the end his love for Stalin. Yezhov denied being a spy, a terrorist, or a conspirator, stating that he preferred “death to telling lies”. He maintained that his previous confession had been obtained under torture, admitted that he had purged 14,000 of his fellow Chekists, but said that he was surrounded by “enemies of the people”.

            Again, I think the truth of the matter is unclear due to the relevant archival evidence not being open, but this is what the story is.

            *I thought that was him but I’m having trouble finding it. I don’t think it was Yagoda, even though he too seemed to be what we would call bi, but it definitely happened to someone . . .

            • GenderIsOpSec [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              In his confession, Yezhov admitted to the standard litany of state crimes necessary to mark him as an “enemy of the people”

              love that neutral point of view natopedia. Very cool

  • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    I used to be a loyal progressive democrat, I used to vote blue every year, I used to not want to be blamed for their loss which was entirely their fault for running a right wing campaign for a terrible candidate, I used to make excuses for them and for me cheems

    Now I fucking want them to blame me swole-doge

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      Best result, Kamala wins but loses the Popular vote. (actually the best result is a split college followed by the White house spontaneously exploding.)

      • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        Another pretty good outcome is Trump wins, dies on election night, and then there’s a Boater Civil War where the two factions (“JD Vance is Trump’s rightful heir” and “JD Vance killed Trump”) kill each other.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      I think it’s sprayed but “We gassed our political opponents” and/or “our political opponents are verminous insects” is about the same level.

      • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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        Also probably why they use the term “scuttling” as well. It’s an odd term to use there, unless their intent was to associate tankies with vermin.

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          Scuttling means to destroy a ship when it’s aground or otherwise too damaged to function. I doubt they picked it for an association with vermin, they have quite different meanings. It is funny, though, as scuttling a ship is something the crew does when the ship is too damaged to be salvaged or at risk of falling in to enemy hands. When enemies destroy the ship it’s sabotage.

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            Some of them can’t grasp that they are not part of the left and that it isn’t friendly fire when leftists are at odds with them. In that case, they’d see ‘tankies’ as foolishly scuttling a perfectly good ship, unable to comprehend that actual leftists would be pleased to see the USS Genocide and it’s entire complement of war criminals sink into the Mariana Trench

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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              Word. American’s have an incredibly distorted view of “The left”. Most people think that “The left” is civil rights issues and maybe healthcare and would balk if you start talking about abolishing private property.

              There’s so little self crit with westerners on why they’re so threatened by an “authoritarian dictator” who died 70 years ago, and why of all the killers and tyrants in the world Stalin is the most evil and hideous and dangerous of them. They just believe it as an article of faith.

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            I know they have different meanings, but it is an odd word to use in this context, which is why the association with scuttling insects is the only reason I can think of that they would use the term rather than something like “sabotaged”

  • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    everything is a spooky conspiracy now. people are divining meaning from every tidbit of information.

    Carl Sagan’s Daemon Haunted World was pure prophecy

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      Drives me bonkers bc I’ll talk about some completely unbelievable looney tunes cartoon villain shit and people will be “uhh that’s a conspiracy theory” and then I’ll start crying and pull up the org’s website where there mission statement is “we do completely unbelievable looney tunes cartoon villain shit which is totally legal and thus does not count as a conspiracy”

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        it’s just no fun to “do your own research” when the research is just presented as a first hand source by the perpetrators of the conspiracy

        they want the New Game + not the easy mode because everything is a form of warped entertainment-cope stalin-stressed

      • MaeBorowski [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        I maintain that the batshit conspiracy theories were cultivated and amplified by three letter agencies and the like for the express purpose of poisoning the well with regards to the actual real conspiracies that did and do happen. Now whenever you talk about these looney tunes cartoon villain shit crimes and events, it’s easy as fuck for anyone to write you off as you yourself being looney with with “that’s just a conspiracy theory” as if conspiracies don’t happen. But look people, conspiracies do happen. All the fucking time. And it’s open knowledge that cannot be denied, it’s even admitted to. “That’s a conspiracy theory” is not a remotely valid reason for thinking it didn’t happen! Meanwhile the false batshit stuff gets pushed relentlessly at every opportunity, even into mainstream pop culture, and that’s what ends up getting treated with a “hmmm, well maybe” by the same people who will scoff at you for trying to tell them of real things that can be verified. It’s truly maddening.

        Popular belief that all conspiracy theories are each just “a conspiracy theory” is itself a conspiracy.
        (And like all conspiracies, when you try to explain this, you’re disregarded for pedaling in conspiracy theories.)

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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          Me too. It’s no coincidence that conspiracy theories as a concept were very popular with the Nazis, and that the term “conspiracy theory” only entered the public lexicon after the JFK assassination. It is a fantastic way to make anyone who questions the “official story” get dismissed out of hand, and in turn, also leads those same people to absurd anti-materialist nonsense instead of actual explanations.

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    fwiw; i think that they bother at all is that they’re afraid we’re going to influence the liberals somehow so it doesn’t matter that we’re too few to affect anything and more so that they see us a threat to their “way of life.” (whatever tf that means)

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        The Pale of Settlement[a] was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 (de facto until 1915) in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary,[1] was mostly forbidden. Most Jews were still excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale as well.

        Yeah it basically meant “where there might be Jews”

        Edit: also note the year that it became defunct and then use that as ammunition against anyone calling the USSR antisemitic. (because after that the Soviet Union didn’t have such racial caste systems)

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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          It never works. People are just straight up “Stalin was planning to genocide all the jews!” and it’s like “Where did you hear that?” and it’s always some bullshit like my uncle knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who allegedly knew a guy who saw some docuemtns that disappeared and left no historical record anywhere at all.